A Student's Guide to History

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A Student's Guide to Historyprovides the practical help students need to be effective in their history courses. In addition to introducing students to the nature of the discipline, it teaches a wide range of skills from preparing for exams to approaching common writing assignments, and it explains the research and documentation process using numerous examples throughout. With clear and accessible advice,A Student's Guide to Historyis an indispensable resource for history students. New, easy-to-reference chapter organization. Shorter, more manageable chapters now focus on more specific concepts, such as building a history essay and documenting sources, so students can more easily find the information they need. Expanded coverage of working with sources. A new chapter explains how to examine any source of historical evidence primary or secondary, written or nonwritten, print or digital. New Guidelines boxes for evaluating primary sources, a new section on sound and video recordings, new warnings about Wikipedia, and more on finding primary sources online equip students to engage in a wide range of historical work. More attention to analysis and argument. New sample writing assignments demonstrate how to analyze and compare primary and secondary sources and present theses with supporting evidence. The research chapters now offer more advice on developing a thesis, using evidence, formulating worthwhile research questions, and writing more persuasive papers. New visual citation guidelines boxes annotate sample pages from books, published letters, print articles, database articles, and Web sites, and key them to model notes and bibliographic entries to show students how to find publication information and properly cite these common sources.

JULES R. BENJAMIN was a professor of history at Ithaca College for 30 years. His current research focuses on higher education in the digital age, and his scholarly works concern modern United States and Latin American diplomatic history. He is the author of several books and articles, including The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880–1934 (1977) and The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in an Age of National Liberation (1990).

PrefaceA Note to Students 1. The Subject of HistoryWhat History Can Tell YouHow Historians WorkApproaches to HistoryHow You Can Use History 2. Succeeding in Your History ClassKeeping Up with Reading Assignments Taking Notes in ClassClassroom ParticipationCommunicating Online 3. Working with Historical EvidencePrimary SourcesSecondary SourcesWhen a Secondary Source Becomes a Primary OneAccessing Sources in Print, in Person, and OnlineReading Written Sources “Reading” Nonwritten Sources 4. Building a History EssayWhy Clear Writing is ImportantPreparing to WriteDrafting Your EssayRevising Your EssayProofreading Your EssayThe Danger of Plagiarism 5. Preparing Specific Writing AssignmentsWriting about Primary SourcesWriting about Secondary SourcesWriting Short EssaysGiving PresentationsTaking Exams 6. Researching a History TopicBeginning the Research ProcessConducting ResearchEvaluating SourcesInterpreting Sources and Taking NotesAvoiding Plagiarism 7. Writing a Research PaperAsserting Your ThesisOrganizing Your Evidence with an OutlineWriting the TextRevising and RewritingExample of a Research Paper 8. Documenting Your Paper: Citing Sources in Chicago StyleFormatting Footnotes and EndnotesOrganizing a BibliographyDocumentation Models Appendix A: Resources for History ResearchAppendix B: Historical Sources in Your Own Backyard